New book traces evolution of American family over 300 years

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The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families 1600-1900, by Stephanie Coontz. Verso "The Social Origins of Private Life" is a Marxist analysis of the changing forms of the American family over a 300year period. It's well worth reading. The basic premise of the book is summarized in the statement: "American history provides no model for those who seek to recover some Coontz argues that there is no biologically "inevitable," "universal," or "natural" family. Instead, she examines the variety of social arrangements we have considered "family"

through the years and places them in the social and The first family system she describes is that of precolonial Native-Americans. These societies were not based on the private property of individuals or on a coercive state power. They were essentially communal. The immediate biological family was dissolved into much larger kinship groups which organized labor and the distribution of goods were not defined in terms of immediate biological relations.

Everyone within an individual household-including servants, apprentices, or boarders —was considered part of the Next, Coontz examines life in the colonial or "household" Colonial society differed from the Native American family. Again, these families were very different from what communities in that they were based on the ownership of private property. But present-day attitudes about the Like the Native American examples, colonial families separation of the public and private spheres did not exist.

Baltimore Cleveland Minnoapolis P.O. Box 16005 P.O. Box 6151 P.O. Box 14087 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1989 15 Press, London, 1988. 365 pp. $13.95 paperback.

perfect family from the past."

BOOKREVIEW economic context of their times. and resources.

Introduction of private property we would consider a "normal" family today. family. A 1955 image of women in the home.

out.

Baltimore, MD 21218 Boston P.O. Box 1046 GMF Boston, MA 02205 (617) 497-0230 Chicago P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657 (312) 327-5752 Cincinnati P.O. Box 21015 Cincinnati, OH 4521 (513) 272-2596 dependence between them.

production for immediate use. roles and gender roles within each class.

in depth in another book.

Beginning in the 1890s, industrial capitalism in the changes in society. The "basic modern family life took shape arena for individuals emotional fulfillment. next book. was diminished along with their productive role.

In the last chapter, the author outlines According to Coontz, the primary function of the 19thinto work The "cult" of privacy the next to explore the emergence of modern United States brought new patterns and contradictions of in this period," Coontz points